23F – To Do

So I’m reading this productivity blog, all ten steps to a better this, that and the other, when I find it. It’s just a to-do list, a program that lets you record everything that needs doing. With little check marks that you can select once a task is done, to give you a tiny satisfying thrill of completion. Simple. Nifty. And, according to the website, absolutely lifechanging.

I’m sold.

Reading the promotional text is like hearing weighty life-lessons from a respected friend, and I’m just nodding along. Yes, I am constantly forgetting to do things! Yes, I am forever writing things down on pieces of paper and losing them! I stand before it as a wreck, trembling, helpless, yet ready to become the very example of dynamic efficiency.

I am ready to embrace change.

So I download it. And it’s amazing.

The tax bill. Gone. The electricity bill, that has so many times threatened with third, final notices, power cuts and worse – history. The article for Surveyors Digest – started. I make more progress in four days than I have in four months. My whole life has completely changed. All thanks to one, simple little to-do list.

And then, I start to notice this odd phenomenon.

Every time I cross one item off the list, another seems to appear. Making a dental appointment should be a cause for celebration, a satisfying tick; instead, it leads to more appointments, white waiting rooms, condescending child-receptionists and x-rays. And while I now know exactly what I need to do, it’s getting harder to keep track of the when.

The list is good. But it’s not enough.

And then I find another program – a calendar. No, not just a calendar, but a comprehensive online date and time scheduling system. It records not only everything I need to do, but exactly when I need to do it. It subdivides my day away from unmanageable Thursdays and bewildering Fridays into sharp-edged little fifteen minute increments.

And it’s colour coded! Orange for work. Teal for personal. Dark grey for paperwork. Pale blue for medical. Ordered. Coded. Fantastic. But…

But some things just don’t fit into either the calendar or the list. Trying to get more exercise – well, that’s more of a weekly goal. I tick it off the list for one week, and then immediately have to write it back in the next. Worse still, I can’t find a place in the schedule for the Surveyors Digest article. I used to have a little spare time mid-week, but now this is taken up with yoga, and the cooking course, and self-empowerment meditation.

For two whole weeks, the article sits on my hard drive, mocking me with its haughty air of incompleteness.

So I find myself a new program.

This one pulls the data from the calendar and the to-do list into a single active desktop, or something. It also comes with birthday reminders, goal orientation tools and a handy numerology chart. So now I’m buying my nephew a birthday gift while resetting my five-year plan in accordance with my birth name and tracking down the current state of my superannuation. Multitasking. Brilliant.

Unfortunately, the to-do list has grown a little. Now I  have to scroll down the screen to see the whole thing. For some time. For a moment I wonder if the four thousand, three hundred and eighty nine things on the list are the cause of my sudden irregular heart beat, my shallow breathing. But then I do a quick web search, and a very helpful website gently lets me in on the fact that I am actually a visually-oriented organiser, and my existing tools aren’t supporting the natural way that my brain processes information.

Aaaaah. Of course.

So I sign up for another program. My hands shake as I fill out the registration form and desperately try to think of another password with at least eight letters, two numbers and one special character. A small price to pay for access to a website that can suck in the data from the list, and the calendar, and the reminders, and the numerology chart, and my latest purchases, and upcoming birthdays of nephews, and parents, and sisters, and estranged aunts, and public holidays, and random photos from strangers, all into one place. With instant messaging. And email alerts. And best of all, my lists and calendars and everything else are now visuals – pie charts, and graphs, and diagrams, and coloured folders. All on one screen. Neat.

I’m breathing. I’m in control. I am ready to start getting it together.

And then a short, tuneless ping heralds the arrival of an email. A simple note from my nephew, written under duress or threat of pocket money being withheld or similar. The program recognises the email address, and my nephew’s badly written fourteen syllable message is neatly tucked away into a “family” folder. This auto-generates a new list item, a reminder to send a reply email, which is picked up by the calendar (giving me a due date for writing the reply) and forwards a string of extra reminders through the system – an alert, a final alert, and a really very final alert, just to make sure.

Unfortunately the final alert clashes with a scheduled life goal re-appraisal. The calendar tries to move the life goal thing to the following day, but that’s is a public holiday. This triggers a reschedule warning, and automatically forwards a reminder to my mobile just in case I’m on the road. My phone, however, is switched off, so it sends back an unavailable notice that sets off a reminder in the system to follow up the missed message. These reminders are picked up by the calendar, which alerts the to-do list while the to-do list tries to force its data back on the calendar.

Now the to-do list and the calendar are desperately updating each other, locked in a battle for domination, scattering alerts, and warnings, and emails as they go. The pie chart becomes a kaleidoscopic spasm on screen, widening and contracting, flashing bright purples, bright pinks, bright yellows, bright blues. Folders open and shut. Twelve thousand things to-do race up the screen. And in the intense, epileptic flicker of the monitor, something pops inside my head.

When they find me I’m still lying here, my eyes open, reflecting the blues and reds of the endless warning messages that are still flashing up on the screen. A small patch of drool has escaped my mouth and spreads slowly out towards the keyboard.